She knew it already.
"So I hear you're engaged, Jack dear." Then, without a moment's pause--"I'm
sure it's all a mistake--a hideous mistake. We shall be as good friends some
day, Jack, as we ever were."
My answer might have made even a man wince. It cut the dying woman before me
like the blow of a whip. "Please forgive me, Jack; I didn't mean to make you
angry; but it's true, it's true!"
And Mrs. Wessington broke down completely. I turned away and left her to
finish her journey in peace, feeling, but only for a moment or two, that I had
been an unutterably mean hound. I looked back, and saw that she had turned her
'rickshaw with the idea, I suppose, of overtaking me.
The scene and its surroundings were photographed on my memory.
The rain-swept sky (we were at the end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy
pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy
background against which the black and white liveries of the jhampanies, the
yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden head stood
out clearly. She was holding her handkerchief in her left hand and was leaning
hack exhausted against the 'rickshaw cushions. I turned my horse up a bypath
near the Sanjowlie Reservoir and literally ran away.
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